The Last House on Needless Street(55)

‘Olivia,’ says the voice. ‘Olivia.’ It’s no louder than a butterfly’s wing. Oooooeeeeeooo.

Hello? I ease out from under the couch. Where are you? I ask, which is just as useless as me talking to the TV, I guess, because it’s definitely a ted saying my name, and they don’t understand.

‘Olivia, in here.’

My heart is beating really loudly. I am on the edge of something. If I do this I can never give back the knowledge. Part of me wants to get back under the couch and forget about it. But I can’t. That wouldn’t be right.

I recognise the voice and where it’s coming from. I have never hoped harder to be wrong.

I go to my crate, in the kitchen. It’s not a crate of course, I just call it that. It’s one of those old chest freezers. I like to sleep in it – the dark, the quiet. But sometimes Ted piles stuff on top of it. Weights. Like now.

I put my ear close. The whine is high like a lady singing opera. But I can still hear her voice, underneath it.

‘Hello?’ she says, tearful, a bare whisper. ‘Olivia?’ The words are faint, she sounds weak and sad, but there is no mistake. I picture her curled up in the dark, in there. I can hear her wet breathing.

‘He’s mad that I made a bad dinner,’ Lauren says, her voice coming eerie through the air holes. ‘So mad. The only time I remember him being this angry was after that time at the mall …’ She’s doing that slight, involuntary gasping that happens when people are tired out from crying.

My mind won’t work properly, it races like that mouse in the walls. My fur stands up in quills.

Calm down, Olivia, I tell myself. So she got herself locked in the freezer somehow. Careless kid …

‘I didn’t lock myself in,’ Lauren says.

I leap a little in the air. You can hear me? I ask. You understand cat? Oh my LORD!

‘Listen. Ted shut me in …’

What a silly accident, I say, relieved. I bet he’ll feel terrible when he realises … OK. Easy! I’ll go wake Ted, and he can let you out.

‘No, please don’t wake him.’ Her voice is like a scream, if a scream could also be a whisper. It’s horrible. It has little bloody flip-flops and scrawls saying help in it. I feel cold marching up my tail, into my spine. Lauren gives a series of hard little gasps like she’s trying to get herself together.

You can’t stay in there for ever, Lauren, I say, reasonable. That’s my place. It’s a little selfish of you, actually. Anyway, your mom will come looking for you, or the school … Is it a school you go to? Sorry, I forget.

‘No, Olivia,’ she whispers. ‘Think. Please.’ I look at the freezer, its size. I look at the air holes Ted pierced in the lid for me. Or were they for me? I feel the answer ebbing through the thick metal door, the rubber seal. The knowledge twists through my organs, flesh and bones.

You don’t go anywhere, when you go away, I say. You stay right here.

‘When you can’t get in, that means I’m here,’ she says. ‘We take turns, I guess.’

I think of it: Lauren lying quiet in the dark, listening as Ted and I go about our business. I haven’t seen you for over a month, I say.

‘Has it been that long? Time drifts here in the dark, it’s hard to tell whether you are dead or not. I wondered. But then I heard you through the wall, and I thought, no, not yet …’

Oh, I say. Oh, oh.

‘I’ve been trying to speak to you,’ she says. ‘Had to find a time when he didn’t stop my mouth too tight, when he was asleep and the music wasn’t too loud. I wrote notes. I slipped them into his pocket, his pants, anywhere I could reach … You didn’t find them I guess but he didn’t either so that’s good. Lucky he’s so drunk, always.’

I row uselessly and turn in circles. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry …

She sighs and I hear the wet catch in her breath. ‘You’re always sorry,’ she says, sounding more like her old self. ‘Always trying to make him feel better.’

Oh, how could he? I say. To lock up his own daughter like this …

She gives a tired little laugh. ‘Grow up, Olivia. I’m not his daughter.’

But you call him Dad.

‘He calls me kitten when I’m good – does that mean I’m a cat?’

I shudder and my tail lashes. He calls me kitten, I say.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘There have been lots of kittens over the years.’

I think back to the night Ted found me, a kit in the woods, the night when the cord bound us together. His cuffs covered in fresh mud. The elusive scent in the back of the car, as if the seat had just been vacated. Soft fabric, yellow with blue butterflies. He wrapped me in a child’s blanket. I guess maybe I should have wondered what was he doing at night in the woods, with mud on his cuffs and a child’s blanket.

I ask, How long have you been here?

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Since I was little.’

All this time, I say. It’s like looking in a mirror, to find it’s really a door. I could really hurt Ted, I could. Oh Lord, I whisper, how awful.

‘You don’t know what awful is.’ Lauren takes a deep breath. ‘I’ll tell this once and then never again.’

‘Once upon a time I lived with my family. I don’t recall that too well. It was long ago and I was little. I don’t remember much about the day he took me, except that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I think my mom used to say that, but I’m not sure. Lauren’s not my real name. I don’t remember that either.